poem – Josh Hodge blog

Check out my two new audiobooks, exclusively on Spotify, read to you by yours truly! Both Moon Beams: Poems and Wagon Wheel: Poems were first made in print editions exclusively as gifts for family and friends for the 2024 and 2025 Christmas seasons, but now I am sharing them with everyone in audio form. Please enjoy them on a nice drive, or winding down and relaxing at night. I wanted to create calm and soothing audiobooks to help you escape and feel as though you are out West with me, marveling at the wonders of nature.

Moon Beams: Poems

From moonlit lakes and alpine meadows to stormy waters and quiet moments of faith, Moon Beams is a poetry collection shaped by wilderness, reflection, and wonder. Inspired by time spent working and wandering in the northern Rockies, Joshua Hodge weaves vivid natural imagery with honest meditations on identity, courage, friendship, and God’s presence. These poems are invitations—to pause, to breathe deeply, and to rediscover perspective under wide skies.

https://open.spotify.com/show/74HiaH62BSkMrUrTBRxs6H.

Wagon Wheel: Poems

Inspired by summers spent working at Glacier National Park in Montana and roaming the northern Rockies, author, teacher, and adventurer Joshua Hodge presents a collection of personal short stories and poems. Vivid imagery brings to life pine forests and snow-capped peaks, wolves and bears, wagon wheels beneath wide skies, and the glow of the northern lights. Thoughtful wonder also draws the listener into reflections on people, nature, and the passage of time.

https://open.spotify.com/show/6alITy7hb5BLd0cDrqmlB1

Spotify App instructions:

Open the Spotify app.
Type the audiobook title using the Spotify “Search” tool on the “Home” interface.
Just under the top search bar, click on the “Audiobooks” filter, as audiobooks don’t appear with the standard search settings.
Select the title you want to listen to from the results. (The audiobooks will stream free for Spotify Premium users with avaliable credit hours. Otherwise the books may be purchased for a small fee.)

Thank you for listening!

More information on www.joshhodge.com

Flor de Mar

In the heart of the vast oceanic blue,

A bloom unlike any, a curious hue,

Flor de Mar, the siren of the sea,

She beckons with allure, voluptuous and free.

With petals flamboyant yet colors askew,

She thinks herself rare, a fantastical view,

A flower which conquers the ocean’s embrace?

But nestled in her heart is a rancorous space.

Her beauty is spoiled, her scent, repelling,

Arrogance oozes though her charm compelling,

The sea wiseley whispers, “Beware of her spell,

Her heart is all frigid, a tale she won’t tell.”

Her morals like seashells, brittle and frail,

Her life like a ship’s rigging, tangled in gale,

But Flor de Mar thinks herself second to none,

A treasure to be sought by each lord’s son.

So she tolls the sea, everything at a cost,

Thus sailors keep distance, or sanity lost,

Oh, how the sea is her profit, her plunder,

Though her pirating ways make all hearts asunder.

Alas she dances with the waves, casting nets afar,

The seafarer wary of this Flor de Mar,

For a flower may bloom where the ocean’s waves sweep,

But her maleficent rarity makes the sailor’s soul weep.

Despite she thinks herself unique, a singular delight,

The sea tells a different tale in the hush of the night,

For it’s not the the petals nor colors so bold,

But the bitter old heart, and the stories untold.

Flor de Mar, what a nautical sight,

Presumptuous and odd, in the moon’s gentle light,

A lesson we learn from your pitiful ways,

Your heart has no holding, no anchors, no bays.

_________

Poet’s Note:

Flor de la Mar was a Portuguese ship build in 1502. It sank.

She’s also a heartless woman.

Tag: poem

My Two New Poetry Audiobooks!

Flor de Mar: a poem